On Sun, 13 Apr 2003, Greg A. Woods wrote:

>> [my bpp/lpd troubles...]

> I've recently tried connecting a similar printer (stc800) to the SS-20
> currently on my desktop and yesterday finally got around to building
> GhostScript-nox11 and tried sending the output of the "uniprint" GS
> driver to the printer (with "cat gs.out > /dev/bpp0").
> 
> It starts out OK, printing as much as an inch or so of a photo, for
> example, then spews some random bits and spits out the page.  What it
> does next seems random.  Once it continued printing the photo on the
> next page, and if the media was transparencies I could have lined them
> up and it would have been a near perfect print.  Another time it just
> spewed some random bits of random color on a line or a few lines of the
> next page, and the next, and the next, and so on until I powered off the
> printer.

I did something similar--converting a postscript file with ghostscript
using the uniprint driver and parameters for stc500p (which seems to
work well with my stc880) to produce "zz.out".

When I did "cat zz.out > /dev/bpp0" it printed correctly.  If, however,
I did "lpr -P raw zz.out" where "raw" is a bare minimum printer
definition with no filtering, then the image printed, but at various
places in the picture, there was extra vertical space between some rows
of graphics data.

If I sent the postscript file to a printer whose definition contained:
...:if=/usr/pkg/libexec/magicfilter/myfilter:..." where "myfilter" is
an appropriately configured magic-filter script, then I would end up
with nothing but garbage for a few pages, then the printer would usually
be hung.

> Unfortunately the power cycling of the printer triggered a "Watchdog
> Reset" and "go" didn't resume the kernel (OF claimed there was no active
> program to resume) so I'm now very reluctant to experiment further until
> I get around to booting another SS to play with.

I seemed to not have a problem with power-cycling the printer to clear
the hang.

> It would be interesting to hear from people with experience using
> SunOS-5.x and similar graphics printers on their parallel ports....

I've done just this on an SS20 running Solaris 9 (SunOS 5.9).  It's a
bit finicky about printer type because 'unknown' is not a valid entry
in the 'terminfo' database.  The best one I found was "epson2500-80"
which will let me print ASCII text and raw epson printer data.

Defining filters to convert other data types is tricky.  Again, I built
'magicfilter' for Solaris9 using pkgsrc.  I can now print postscript files
and have them converted automagically.  I need to study the filter
definition, content type and filter selection process more carefully
because now, anything that is not postscript gets sent directly to the
printer without conversion (not good for JPEGs, etc.).

> It would also be interesting to hear from anyone with a similar printer
> connected to a Magma SP board.

As a matter of fact, I have one of these, although it may be some time
before I can try using a printer on it (I needed it for the high-speed
serial ports...).

> Now I _really_ wish my printer was an 800N (i.e. a model with the
> built-in Ethernet interface).

Nifty.  I'd not heard of this model before.

-- 
John D. Baker, KN5UKS                      jdbaker(at)mylinuxisp(dot)com
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